Everyday War and Ethics of Care in Ukraine

Greta Uehling, lecturer at the Program in International and Comparative Studies and Faculty Associate, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, University of Michigan
In conversation with Emily Channell-Justice, director, Temerty Contemporary Ukraine Program, HURI

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Abstract

By now, images of Ukraine under Russian bombardment are painfully familiar. Also familiar are statements that Ukrainians have launched a surprisingly resilient response to Russian aggression. How do we theorize these experiences of the war in a way that advances knowledge about war in general and Ukraine in particular? 
 
Uehling’s talk will engage this question from an anthropological perspective. Her new book, Everyday War, explores the subjective experience of war and forced displacement in Ukraine. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Uehling explores how and why interpersonal relationships, which are usually treated as tangents or backdrops to the “real” action of war, matter. In this talk, she will show how landscapes filled with destruction and death also prompted fresh attentiveness to human vulnerabilities and how everyday ethics of care can arise even in the midst of routine violations of international humanitarian law.

This book talk will comprise a short presentation by the author followed by conversation with Emily Channell-Justice and audience Q&A. 

Book Description

Everyday War provides an accessible lens through which to understand what noncombatant civilians go through in a country at war. What goes through the mind of a mother who must send her child to school across a minefield or the men who belong to groups of volunteer body collectors? In Ukraine, such questions have been part of the daily calculus of life. Greta Uehling engages with the lives of ordinary people living in and around the armed conflict over Donbas that began in 2014 and shows how conventional understandings of war are incomplete.

In Ukraine, landscapes filled with death and destruction prompted attentiveness to human vulnerabilities and the cultivation of everyday, interpersonal peace. Uehling explores a constellation of social practices where ethics of care were in operation. People were also drawn into the conflict in an everyday form of war that included provisioning fighters with military equipment they purchased themselves, smuggling insulin, and cutting ties to former friends. Each chapter considers a different site where care can produce interpersonal peace or its antipode, everyday war.

Bridging the fields of political geography, international relations, peace and conflict studies, and anthropology, Everyday War considers where peace can be cultivated at an everyday level.

About the Speaker

Greta Uehling began her career by working directly with refugees, helping them find work in the United States. Her experiences in refugee resettlement motivated her to pursue a PhD in cultural anthropology, and have informed her career ever since.

After earning her PhD, she became a consultant with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Geneva, Switzerland, working in the Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit. Her work on irregular migration there led to another migration-related position as a Family Reunification Coordinator for minors smuggled across United States borders from Latin America and China, in Washington, DC.

With her current project, Uehling sought to tell the story of internal displacement in Ukraine in a way that is multivocal. She uses the language of lived experience to take readers on a journey through Ukraine that deepens understanding and solidarity.

Uehling dedicated Everyday War to her students because they inspire her to write with their many insightful questions.

 

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Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact Megan Duncan Smith, HURI Programs Coordinator, at duncansmith@fas.harvard.edu in advance of the session (at least two weeks prior, if possible).

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